Neoclassicism to Realism
+
Class code
ARTH-UA9411-001
Instructor Details
Professor Barbara SHAPIRO COMTE
[email protected]
Office location: Room 4.09
Office hours: Wednesdays, 18h-19h, or by appointment
Class Details
Neoclassicism to Realism (Spring 2016)
Wednesdays: NYU/P in-house lectures 15h00-18h00; museum visits: 15h30-18h30 sharp unless
otherwise indicated on your separate MUSEUM VISITS HANDOUT
NYU/P classroom location: 4.11 TBC
For specific museum meeting points, consult Museum Visits Schedule handout.
KINDLY REMEMBER TO BRING YOUR NYUPARIS ID CARDS TO ALL MUSEUM VISITS TO ENSURE FREE STUDENT ENTRIES.
To validate it with a special sticker, see Jonathan Gonçalves, NYUP WELCOME CENTRE.
Prerequisites
Enthusiasm for the subject and approach; active participation in class sessions and museum visits; serious
commitment to readings and timely fulfillment of course assignments.
Class Description
Our course explores the dramatic evolution of French art and architecture across some 150 tumultuous
years, from the death of Louis XIV into the age of Enlightenment and Neoclassicism (1715-1780s),
through the age of revolutions (1789-1848) when radical iconography is invented for the new Republic
and the rise of the avant-garde, to the demise of Napoleon III’s Second Empire (1851-1870) when effects
of the Workers Revolution and modernization of Paris converge, pretext for demographic and
sociopolitical controls. We examine the ways by which both official “academic” and subversive art,
architecture, and diverse media─painting, drawing, sculpture, popular prints, caricatures; royal palaces,
public monuments, private residences; lithography and photography─operate as a potent discursive
programme within French society and a probe for investigating power and representation, tradition and
change, and class divisions. Thereby multiple "voices" are heard out, from monarchs, emperors,
Revolutionaries and Republicans to Marxists, capitalists, the bourgeoisie, and working class, including
disenfranchised women. Hence the role of art as a dense symbolic language of communication,
persuasion, and propaganda, and/or a critique of prevailing social and moral values dominates our study.
Illustrated, interactive, weekly lectures are complemented by seminar discussions, collaborative
museums visits, and independent or group excursions in Paris (including Musée du Louvre, Musée de
l’Armée/Hôtel national des Invalides, and Musée d’Orsay), nearby outskirts (Château de Versailles and
Château de Malmaison at Rueil-Malmaison), and special seasonal exhibitions.
Conducted in English.
Desired Outcomes •Familiarity with art history methods and theories, aids to our understanding of art as a systematic, formal,
visual language of communication.
•Awareness of the representation of power and its diffusion as a result of persuasive, multi-media artistic
control, official or popular.
•Understanding the means by which we perceive and decode visual media, and recognize their influence
over our perceptions of the global world.
•An enduring passion for French art through dynamic classes and personal confrontations with original
works of art and sites of artistic production.
Assessment
Components
Requirements & grading based on continuous evaluation
• Quarter-term visual analysis (4pp) adapting art history terms to one original artwork (Louvre):
• Midterm take-home exam related to artworks studied & assigned readings:
• Two-part final exam based on take-home essays (6pp) + in-class quiz:
20% + 20% =
• Presence & active participation in class & museum visits:
Failure to submit or fulfil any required course component results in failure of the course.
20%
30%
40%
10%
Assessment
Expectations
*SEE “GRADING POLICY” BELOW.
Grade A: Excellent work
Grade B: Very good work
Grade C: Satisfactory work
Grade D: Passable work
Grade F: Failure to attain a passable level of work
Grade
Conversion
Grading Policy*
Attendance
Policy
A =
A- =
B+ =
B =
B- =
C+ =
C =
C- =
D+ =
D =
D- =
16
15
14
13
12
11
10
9
8
7
6
Félicitations/Congratulations
Excellent
Très bien/Very good
Bien/Good
Encourageant/Assez bien/Encouraging work/Quite good
Moyen plus/Above average
Moyen/Average
Passable/Passing grade
NYU Paris aims to have grading standards and results in all its courses similar to those
that prevail at Washington Square.
Study abroad at Global Academic Centers is an academically intensive and immersive experience,
in which students from a wide range of backgrounds exchange ideas in discussion-based seminars.
Learning in such an environment depends on the active participation of all students. And since
classes typically meet once or twice a week, even a single absence can cause a student to miss a
significant portion of a course. To ensure the integrity of this academic experience, class
attendance at the centers is mandatory, and unexcused absences will affect students'
semester grades. Students are responsible for making up any work missed due to absence.
Repeated absences in a course may result in failure.
As per the Global Academic standard, unexcused absences will be penalized with a two
percent deduction from the student’s final course grade1.
Other guidelines specific to NYUParis include:
 Attendance to class and all course-related events, even outside of regularly
scheduled course times, is expected and mandatory. Some class outings/make-up
classes take place on Fridays
 Under no circumstances will non-University-related travel constitute an excused
absence from class. DO NOT book travel until you have received and carefully studied
the syllabus of each of your classes.
 If you are not sick enough to go to the doctor, you are well enough to go to class.
Doctor’s notes will be expected for all medical-related absences.
 No tests, quizzes, or exams will be made up. A missed test, quiz, or exam will result
in a zero. Questions about this policy should be directed to the Academic Affairs team,
not your professor.
1
Late Submission
of Work
Unless for medical reasons (confirmed by a doctor’s certificate), late submissions are not accepted and
result in failure of the course.
Plagiarism Policy
New York University in Paris, as an academic community, is committed to free and
open inquiry, to creating an intellectual and social environment that promotes this, and to
upholding the highest standards of personal and academic integrity.
NYU’s “Policies and procedures for students studying away at a Global Academic Center”
All NYUP students have the responsibility to uphold these stated objectives. As a
member of this community, you accept the responsibility for upholding and maintaining
these standards, which include refraining from all forms of plagiarism and cheating as
detailed below.
Cases of plagiarism at NYUParis will be brought to the attention of NYUParis
academic administration as well as the implicated student’s home school Dean.
PLAGIARISM: a form of fraud, presenting someone else’s work as though it were your own2
 A sequence of words from another writer who you have not quoted and referenced in
footnotes3
 A paraphrased passage from another writer’s work that you have not cited.
 Facts or ideas gathered and reported by someone else4
 Another student’s work that you claim as your own
 A paper that is purchased or “researched” for money
 A paper that is downloaded free of charge from the Internet
CHEATING
 Copying from another student’s exam or quiz
 Giving or receiving unauthorized assistance (crib sheets, internet, etc.) during an exam
or quiz
 Having someone take your exam
 Accessing an exam or quiz in an unauthorized fashion prior to its administration
 Collaborating with other students or unauthorized persons on a take home exam
 Using the same written material for two courses without the express permission of both
instructors
 Fabricating or falsifying data
Required Texts
Supplemental
Texts(s
NYUParis Library)
Internet Research
Guidelines
Additional
Required
Equipment
Assigned weekly readings (rf syllabus, below) are made available in three separate forms, as follows:
• Class Reader (vols. 1 & 2)─Code R1 or R2)─to be purchased at Mistral Photo, 40 rue St Jacques, 5°.
• Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, Nineteenth-Century European Art, 2011, 3rd edition─Code PtDC─ is
available for consultation in NYUParis Library: Call Number: 759.05/CHU (3 copies). The assigned Chu
readings are also available as individual master photocopies from which students may make their own
personal copies. Consult NYUP librarians for assistance.
• Electronic readings─Code PDF─will be emailed to students well in advance of assignment dates.
NB Students are responsible for reading assigned weekly texts before each scheduled class and
responding actively to related discussions in class and museums.
Readings and personal notes should be brought to the appropriate class for consultation.
As noted within the syllabus, supplementary or optional readings are listed at the appropriate dates.
Recognized academic internet sources (eg. on-line Oxford Dictionary of World Mythology, Saint James
Version of the Bible [Old and New Testaments]) are permitted for course assignments when correctly
acknowledged in footnotes or parenthetical notes. More explicit guidelines will be distributed with
quarter-term, midterm, and final paper assignments. If in doubt, kindly consult your professor before
submitting personal work for grading.
Sketchbook/notebook, pen/pencil, camera and/or cell phone with camera capacity
NYU’s Expository Writing Department’s Statement on Plagiarism
NYU Statement on Plagiarism
4 NYU Statement on Plagiarism
2
3
SYLLABUS Content Part 1: SESSIONS 1 through 4: JANUARY 20 – FEBRUARY 10
Introduction to the historic foundations, scope, theories and methodology of our course. Analysis of Paris
& Assigned
as a site of artistic production, the evolution of medieval guild practices under Louis XIII toward the
Readings
centralized Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture under Louis XIV, and the foundations of classical
history painting by Nicolas Poussin. Investigation of subjects and sources of inspiration from GrecoRoman and Judeo-Christian sources as the basis of a discursive, ethical and moralizing art, reworked as an
art of persuasion and manipulation under the Sun King’s Absolute rule. Proliferation of painting types and
changes in patronage and tastes under Regent Philippe d'Orléans, Louis XV, and Louis XVI, from
introverted Regency and libertine Rococo art to moralizing Enlightenment works under the influence of
les philosophes (Voltaire and Rousseau) and art critic-cum-literary figure Denis Diderot, co-editor with
Jean d’Alembert, of La Grande Encyclopédie (1750-1780s). This period prepares the fertile ground on
which Neoclassical art emerges.
Session 1
January 20
Quarter-term
paper assigned,
due 3 February
Session 2
January 27
*Musée du
Louvre: enter
via Passage
Richelieu.
Meet at Lower
Ground Floor
Info Desk*
Introductory lecture: socio-political context under Louis XIV; foundations of high classical history painting
(inspired by Nicolas Poussin) and the Royal Academies under Louis XIV.
Assigned Readings
•PtDC, “Introduction,” Nineteenth-Century European Art, 14-19.
•R1 & PowerPoint attachment Anthony Blunt, “Nicolas Poussin,” Art and Architecture in France 15001700 (Penguin, Baltimore, Maryland, 1954), 182-194, plates 125A-136. Refer to electronic file attachment
for colour plates.
•PDF Albert Boime, “The Crystallization of French Official Art,” The Academy & French Painting in the
Nineteenth Century (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1986), 1-8.
•PDF Humphrey Wine, “The End of History? Painting in France c.1700-1880,” Tradition and Revolution in
French Art 1799-1880 (The National Gallery, London, 1993), 13-22.
•R1 Peter Burke, “Introducing Louis XIV,” The Fabrication of Louis XIV (Yale University Press, New Haven
and London, 1992), 1-13.
Nicolas Poussin and the French 17th-century classical history painting tradition.
Louis XIV and Charles Le Brun: royal art of persuasion and manipulation.
Le Brun’s allegorical Galerie d’Apollon; Rigaud’s Louis XIV standing portrait.
Assigned Readings
•R1 Peter Burke, “Persuasion,” The Fabrication of Louis XIV (Yale University Press, New Haven and
London, 1992), 14-37.
•R1 Jon and Linda Whitely, “The Institutions of French Art, 1648-1900,” Tradition and Revolution in
French Art 1799-1880 (The National Gallery, London, 1993), 31-38.
Highly recommended permanent installation & independent special exhibition to visit with classmates:
1. Chateau de Versailles: Galerie des Glaces (free entry with student card)
2. “Le Roi est Mort, Vive le Roi!” commemorating the tricentenary of Louis XIV’s death in 1715.
Closing date: 21 February 2016. Consult: www.chateauversailles.fr/annee-louis-xiv
Session 3
February 3
Quarter-term
paper due.
Midterm
assigned, due
February 24
Session 4
February 10
*Musée du
Louvre: enter
individually
& meet in
specified
gallery.*
Regency, Rococo, and Enlightenment art under Louis XV and early Louis XVI.
Assigned Readings
•PDF Donald Posner, excerpts, Antoine Watteau (Cornell U. P., Ithaca, New York), 13-65 + colour plate.
•PDF Dorinda Outram, “What Was the Enlightenment?,” Panorama of the Enlightenment (Thames &
Hudson, London, 2006), 22-53.
•PDF Barry Bergdoll, Chapter 2, “What is Enlightenment? The City and the Public, 1750-89,” European
Architecture, 1750-1890 (Oxford U.P., Oxford and New York, 2000), 42-51, notes, 241.
Regency, Rococo, & Enlightenment art: Gillot, Watteau, Boucher, Fragonard, Chardin, Greuze.
From innovative, introspective Regency fêtes galantes paintings to libertine scenes by Rococo artists
under Louis XV, in comparison with Enlightenment genre artists under the influence of Denis Diderot and
fellow contributors to the Grande Encyclopédie.
Assigned Readings
•PtDC, “Rococo, Enlightenment, and the Call for a New Art in the Mid Eighteenth Century, 20-43.
•R1 Daniel Roche, “The Liberties of Individuals,” France in the Enlightenment, trans. A. Goldhammer
(Harvard U. P., Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England, 1998), 519-531.
PART 2: SESSIONS 5 THROUGH 8, FEBRUARY 17 – MARCH 9
Reacting against lax values, Rococo excess, and Greuze’s maudlin scenes, under the influence of Voltaire’s
“comte philosophique,” Rousseau’s Social Contract, and neoclassical reforms in art and architecture during
the 1750s-80s, Jacques-Louis David spearheads neoclassical revisions in French art. He revives Poussinian
rigour, reinterprets classical sources, and attacks Royal Academy practices. Spurred by Louis XVI’s perilous
foreign policies and indifference to France’s socio-political and economic decline, David’s daring neoclassical
works provoke debates over Absolute rule, old class divisions, duty to the family and/or the nation. From the
Revolutionary years (1784-94), Neoclassical and Revolutionary art, including caricature, popular prints and
festivals, serve as a purge to political and moral corruption under Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette,
culminating in their death by guillotine. Studies in the binary themes of death and regeneration, as a
foundation for innovative art fit for the new Nation, stimulates our investigation into the invention of icons
of revolutionary martyrs, portraits of citoyens and citoyennes, and gendered images of the République.
Session 5
February 17
Against Greuze, young David distinguishes himself as a precursor of neoclassical principles and tastes. His
Roman sojourn at the French Academy in Rome results in a cleansing of Rococo indulgences and libertine
excess, replaced by stringent, stoic principles in form and content, influenced by literary, political, social
theory (Voltaire, Rousseau) as well as architectural and artistic reforms stirring up in Rome of the 1780s.
Assigned Readings
•PDF Emma Barker, “Painting and Reform in Eighteenth-Century France: Greuze’s L’Accordée de Village,
Oxford Art Journal, 20, N°2 (1977), 42-52.
•PtDC, “The Classical Paradigm,” Winckelmann through David, 44-73.
•R1 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Book I,” The Social Contract and Discourses, trans. G.D.H. Cole (Everyman/
Dent, London and Charles E. Tuttle, Vermont), 1993, 181-199.
Session 6
February 24
Musée du
Louvre
Midterm due
Emerging Neoclassicism: late Greuze and early David.
From Rococo visual clutter to Neoclassical clarity: studies on pictorial restraint and narrative inventions.
Assigned Readings.
•R1 REVIEW Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Book I,” The Social Contract and Discourses, 181-199.
•R1 REVIEW Daniel Roche, “The Liberties of Individuals,” France in the Enlightenment, trans. A.
Goldhammer (Harvard U. P., Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England, 1998), 519-531.
Session 7
March 2
Session 8
March 9
From the late reign of Louis XVI to Revolution & Terror: evolution from sacred to desecrated royal icons,
male to female allegories of the Nation, and Revolutionary caricatures (Royalist, Monarchist, Jacobin,
parliamentarian, or democratic from French, British and American perspectives.
Assigned Readings & independent Film Viewing
•PtDC, “Art and Revolutionary Propaganda in France,” 98-113.
•PDF Antoine de Baecque, “Louis XVI; or, The Sacred Remains,” Glory and Terror. Seven Deaths under
the French Revolution, trans. Charlotte Mandell (Routledge, London, 2003), 86-119, notes 223-226.
•R1 Lynn Hunt, “The Imagery of Radicalism,” Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution
(University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 2nd ed., 2004), 87-119.
•R1 Richard Clay, “Re-Making French Revolutionary Iconoclasm,” Art et Pouvoir, INHA, 2012/1, 181-86.
Case studies on late Enlightenment and Revolutionary art in France (1789-1794) before and after the
guillotining of king Louis XVI and queen Marie-Antoinette in January and October 1793 respectively:
Elisabeth Vigée Le Brun, a study in artistic accommodation to royal patronage & Jacques-Louis David,
enquiry on artistic experiments and survival tactics as First Painter to the Jacobins under Robespierre.
Assigned reading
•R1 T.C.W. Blanning, “The Cultural Origins of the French Revolution”, extract: “Louis XVI, Marie
Antoinette, and the Fall of the Absolute Monarchy,” The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture
(Oxford University Press, New York, 2002), 406-427.
•R1 William Vaughan and Helen Weston, “Introduction,” David's The Death of Marat (Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, UK, 2000), 1-33.
Independent film viewing, NYU/P Coll.: “Danton,” dir. Andrej Wajda (1982), English version, 2h15m.
PART 3: SESSIONS 9 THROUGH 11, MARCH 16- MARCH 30
Through shifts in political strategies and aspirations of French statesmen, our study tracks innovative
iconography mirrored in late Neoclassical works to suit changing representations of power, from postRevolutionary Consulate and Republican governance to Napoleon Bonaparte’s military campaigns and
founding of Empire (1804). During Louis XVIII’s and Charles X’s Bourbon Restoration (1815-1830) after
Napoleon’s Waterloo, new painting types emerge. Commissioned modern propaganda history paintings
and independent, introverted, anti-establishment artworks inspire contrasting painting types in style and
intention: flattering late neoclassical paintings of manipulated consent to respond to myth-making at
home and abroad contra anti-academic Romantic experiments to explore feelings, subversion, and mal de
siècle, refracted through narratives sourced from faits divers or sensational contemporary news events.
Session 9
March 16
David, Ingres and Gros in transition from the post-Revolutionary Directory through Napoleon Bonaparte’s
Consulate, Italian & Egyptian campaigns, and coronation. Reflections on controlled state art policies,
censorship, painted propaganda, and compromised artistic values during the late Neoclassical and early
Romantic periods.
Assigned Readings
•PtDC, “The Arts under Napoleon,” 114-143.
•R2 T. Wilson-Smith, “From First Consul to Emperor,” Napoleon and His Artists (Constable, London, 1996), 85-96.
•R2 Todd Porterfield, “Paintings of the Egyptian Campaign,” The Allure of Empire. Art in the Service of
French Imperialism 1798-1836 (Princeton U. P., Princeton, N.J., 1998), 43-79, notes 170-181.
•R2 Susan L. Siegfried, “Introduction: Staging an Empire,” and Todd Porterfield, “The Performative,” in
T. Porterfield and S. L. Siegfried, Staging Empire. Napoleon, Ingres, and David (Pennsylvania State U. P.,
University Park, Pennsylvania, 1998), 3-22, notes 201-204 and 114-135, notes 229-235.
Session 10
March 23
Disengaged from Napoleon’s overarching ambitions and disillusioned by his abandonment of Republican
ideals, Géricault and Delacroix create a new role for Romantic art during the Consulate, late
Empire and Bourbon Restoration. They unveil Napoleon’s elitist Imperial court, corruption, and corrosion of power, including rescinding laws on women’s civil rights and restoring slavery in French colonies.
Reflecting pervasive doubt and skepticism throughout Europe, Géricault’s isolation, torment, revolt, and
mental fatigue filter through his representations of alienation, madness and mal de siècle. Delacroix’s
sympathy toward the “victim” determines his political engagement in the Greek cause, and the people’s
revolt against the Bourbon Monarchy during the French July Revolution of 1830.
Assigned Readings
•PtDC, “The Restoration Period and the Beginnings of Romanticism in France,” 200-221.
•R2 Hugh Honour, “For Lack of a Better Name,” Romanticism (Harper & Row, New York, 1979), 21-55.
•Anita Brookner, excerpt, Romanticism and its Discontent (New York, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2000),
Handout, TBC.
•R2 Albert Boime, “Portraying Monomaniacs to Service the Alienist’s Monomania: Géricault and Georget,”
Oxford Art Journal, vol.14, no.1 (1991), 79-91.
ASCENSION DAY, Monday, MARCH 28
Session 11
March 30
Musée du Louvre
15h30-18h30
+ Supplement
19h-20h:
Portraits
of an Age
R
Comparisons between David’s painting of Emperor Napoleon’s Sacre and Gros’ depictions of warring
Napoleon on Egyptian and European battlefields underline the political agenda of Napoleon’s brother
Jerome Bonaparte, Minister of Propaganda. Gros’ valiant, but compromised works influence Gericault
and Delacroix’s Romantic quest for personal truth and feelings over political correctness. Based on “faits
divers” (current events) over official commissions, Géricault’s art encompasses scenes of injustice,
disillusionment, and social malaise. Delacroix’s alienation, solitude, Orientalism, and political engagement
is inscribed in the plight of the Greeks against the Turks and supports the struggle of the people, across
class divides, against the corrupt Bourbon Monarchy during the July Revolution of 1830.
Assigned Readings
•PDF Darcy Grimaldo Grisby,”Rumor, Contagion and Colonization in Gros’ Plague-Stricken of Jaffa (1804),”
Representations, N° 51 (Summer 1995), 1-46.
•R2 Robert Rosenblum and H.W. Janson, “Painting: 1815-1848. Théodore Géricault,” Art of the Nineteenth Century. Painting and Sculpture (Thames & Hudson, London, 1984), 118-123, pl.18.
•R2 Linda Nochlin, “The Myth of the Woman Warrior,” Representing Women (Thames & Hudson, London,
1999), 34-57.
PART 4: SESSIONS 12 THROUGH 15, APRIL 6 - MAY 11
Examination of Paris and its environs as the context of artistic production through the compromised
Louis-Philippe’s July Monarchy (1830-1847), at the brink of the pan-European Workers’ Revolution,
President Louis-Napoleon’s Second Republic (1851-52) and Napoleon III’s Second Empire (1852-70).
Landscape painting and peasant scenes move from minor genre pictures to politicized proletariat
agrarian Realism. They reflect the impact of the international Marxist Revolution, the rise of popular
culture, and Realist art focused on pauperized peasants and exploited urban workers.
Napoleon III and his Prefect Georges Haussmann’s embellishment of Paris, “capital of Europe” impacts
on art and architectural practices. Realism into Modernism, Marxism into Capitalism, art of the Second
Empire represents the flaneurs’ perspective and “The Painter[s] of Modern life” according to Baudelaire.
Session 12
April 6
Final TakeHome Exam
assigned, due
May 11, last
Session 15
French avant-garde artists conceive art to represent their own times, from unadorned landscapes by
nature painters of the Fontainebleau and Barbizon Schools (Corot, Diaz), and pre-industrial, rural
and agricultural scenes (Courbet, Millet), to popular urban scenes by Realists and Modernists
(Daumier, Manet, Degas, Caillebotte). Intransigent artists represent Paris as the city of hidden
agendas and social disguises in operas, theatres, brothels, cafés, and bars, frequented by upperclass gentlemen strollers, intermingling with working-class prostitutes, courtesans, bar-maids, and
dancers. Dressing-up and dressing-down blur social distinctions and engender social dishevelment,
with latent corruption at all levels, Subverting government controls, bourgeois tastes and
decorum, artists turn their trenchant scrutiny against the “myth of modernity” through radical style
innovations and subversive subjects: city “embellishment” at the expense of the poor, capitalist
exploitation of government real-estate investment incentives, expropriated and dislocated workers,
homelessness, child labour, and rampant prostitution.
Assigned Readings
•PtDC, “The Popularization of Art and Visual Culture in France during the July Monarchy (1830-1848) and
“The Revolution of 1848 and the Emergence of Realism in France,” 222-253 and 254-265, respectively.
•PDF Linda Nochlin, “The Invention of the Avant-Garde: France, 1830-1880,”The Politics of Vision.
Essays on Nineteenth-Century Art and Society (Harper & Row, New York, 1989), 1-18.
Film viewing: Les Misérables [The Wretched], dir. Jean-Paul Le Chanois, based on Victor Hugo’s novel
Les Misérables, 5 vols; (1862), a historical novel situated in 1815-1832, covering the history of French
architecture, urbanism, politics, moral philosophy, and anti-monarchism. Full English serial version:
U-Tube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFH803z5G4M
Session 13
April 13
Musée
d’Orsay
15h15-18h
Realism into Modernism, from “art of one’s own time” (Daumier, Millet, Courbet) to “Painter[s] of
Modern Life” (Manet, Caillebotte, Degas): the rise of the political avant-garde during the Workers’
Revolution and its percussion on landscape/rural painters (Corot, Millet) and self-appointed Realist
spokesman Courbet, from the heart of la France profonde, author of the influential “Realist Manifesto”
(1855). Case studies of paintings by urban “flaneurs” (Manet, Caillebotte, Degas) depict an edgy, satiric,
critical view of Haussmann’s Paris, its urban working-class conditions, filtered through mordant wit and
sexual innuendoes tinged by of Parisian popular culture.
Assigned readings
•R2 James Rubin, “Autobiography and Social Vision. World Prophecy from the Studio,” and “Realism as
Language and Attitude,” Courbet (Phaidon, London, 1997), 134-154 and 156-174, notes 343.
•PtDC, “Progress, Modernity, and Modernism─French Visual Culture during the Second Empire, 18521870,” 266-301.
•PDF Charles Baudelaire, “IV. Modernity” and “IX. The Dandy,” The Painter of Modern Life [1863] and
Other Essays, trans. & ed. Jonathan Mayne (Phaidon Press, London, 1964), excerpts, 12-15 and 26-31.
SPRING BREAK: APRIL 16 THROUGH MAY 1
Session 14
May 6, Friday
Time TBC
Session 15
May 11
Final in-class
exam
15h00-16h30
Concluding mandatory special visit on Friday, May 6, time & transport TBC.
Emperor Napoleon & Empress Josephine’s Château de Malmaison, multi-disciplinary visit, coordinated
with Professor Catherine Healey, Napoleon I’s specialist, and her class.
1.5 hour in-class final exam based on slide identifications and comparative analyses, in reference to
topics and artists studied post-midterm, session 7 (March 2) through Session 14 (May 6) inclusive.
Final take-home exam also due on this date.
ETIQUETTE
Classroom
Etiquette
• No eating in class.
• No cell phones in class.
Museum
Etiquette
Students are responsible for entering the Louvre independently with their individual NYU/P ID cards,
and make their way directly to the specified gallery location at the appointed hour.
Please consult your separate Museum Visits hand-out sheet and official Musée du Louvre floor plans
for specific locations. Prompt arrivals are essential to the smooth running of our visits & courtesy to
fellow students and professor.
Food and drinks are not permitted in museums. During visits, we shall have one 15-minute break.
 No laptop computers in class unless permission is expressly given by your professors.
 Leaving class (before the break) to go to the bathroom or yawning in class is considered
rude in France. During our 3-hour in-class, there is one 10-minute break.
Required Cocurricular Activities None
Highly recommended independent visits to Château of Versailles, gardens & town by RER (train):
Suggested Cocurricular Activities
■Galerie des Glaces, gardens (André de Nôtre, designer/gardener), & Petit Trianon with its park
■Special exhibition, closing 21 February 2016: “Le Roi est Mort, Vive le Roi !” commemorating the
tricentenary of Louis XIV’s death in 1715: Consult: www.chateauversailles.fr/annee-louis-xiv
■Revolutionary Versailles: The Jeu de Paume. Free entry, Tuesday-Sunday, 14h00 -17h45. Info:
+33(0)1 39 24 88 88. In this classified historic building, or “realm of memory,” on 20 June 1789, the
"Oath of the Tennis Court" was signed. Luc-Olivier Merson’s 19th-century grisaille (grey monochrome)
facsimile (1883) of David’s original pen-and-ink preparatory sketch is hung in the north gable end.
Your Instructor
Barbara Shapiro Comte, dual Canadian and French citizen
B.A. University of British Columbia, double major in English & North American Literature and Studio & History of Art
B.ARCH. School of Architecture, University of British Columbia
M.A., Ph.D. Harvard University, Department of History of Art and Architecture
Interests
French art, 1630s-1830s; French Modern Art, 1840s-1940s (Realism to Surrealism)
Paris architecture and urban planning, 1660s-1950s; Le Grand Paris (Central and Metropolitan Paris), present & future
French architectural drawings, 17th-21st centuries
Publications & conferences include:
▪ “From King’s Feet to Republican Metres,” presented at the 5th International Congress of Construction History, Chicago, June 2015, supported by a Global
Faculty Grant, New York University.
▪ “The Evolution, Standardization and Diffusion of Architects’ Construction Drawings through Printed Sources, 1750s-1850s,” La Construction savante. Les
avatars de la littérature technique, Conference proceedings, Institut national d'histoire de l'art and Centre d'Histoire des Techniques et de l'Environnement,
Conservatoire national des Arts et Métiers/École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, March 2005, Éditions Picard and INHA, Paris, 2008, 179-192.
▪ Debra Pincus and Barbara Shapiro Comte, “A Drawing for the Tomb of Dante attributed to Tullio Lombardo,” The Burlington Magazine, November 2006,
vol. CXLVIII, 734-746.
▪ Catalogue entries: Erich Mendelsohn, Einstein Tower (Potsdam Astrophysical Observatory), Theo Van Doesburg, and the Aubette Project, Strasbourg, Collection
d'Architecture, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, 1998.
▪ Dictionary entries: James Bogardus, Myron Goldsmith, Fazlur Khan, Chestnut-DeWitt Apartments, John Hancock Building and Sears Tower, Dictionnaire des
Ingénieurs, ed. A. Picon, Centre Georges Pompidou, Le Moniteur, Paris, 1997.
Translations include:
▪ Caroline Maniaque Benton, Le Corbusier and the Maisons Jaoul, trans. Barbara Shapiro Comte, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2009.
▪ English website, Éditions du patrimoine, Paris, 2007-2009.
▪ Alexandre Gady, The Hôtel de Sully in the Heart of the Marais, trans. Barbara Shapiro Comte, Éditions du patrimoine, Paris, 2008.
▪Museum International, nos. 229-230, 231-232, 233-234 (The Cultural Heritage of Migrants), 235 (The Stakes of the Collection in the 21st Century), ed. Isabelle
Vinson, trans. Renée Champion and Barbara Shapiro Comte, UNESCO, Paris, 2005, 2006, 2007.
▪ Jean-Michel Leniand and Françoise Pernot, The Sainte Chapelle, trans. Charles Penwarden, copy editors, Cathy Lenihen and Barbara Shapiro Comte, Éditions
du patrimoine, Paris, 2007.
▪Bernard Bauchet, “Documents on the Restoration of Modern Movement Buildings,” Columbia University conference paper, New York, trans. Barbara Shapiro
Comte, September 2004.
▪ Gérard Fontaine, The Palais Garnier. National Opera of Paris, trans. Barbara Shapiro Comte, Éditions du patrimoine, Paris, 2001.
▪ Bernard Marrey, The Eiffel Tower, trans. Barbara Shapiro Comte, Éditions du patrimoine, Paris, 2001.
▪ Gérard Fontaine, Charles Garnier's Opéra: Architecture and Exterior Decor, trans. Elie Rea with Barbara Shapiro Comte, Éditions du patrimoine, Paris, 2000.
▪ Dominique Fernandes and Gilles Plum, Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile, trans. Barbara Shapiro Comte, Éditions du patrimoine, Paris, 2000.